Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is my pleasure to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, to the House. It is nearly eight years since the High Court first ruled that the Irish State was in breach of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights because it did not have a mechanism to legally recognise the preferred gender of transgender individuals. I am happy to see the Government moving to rectify an obvious anomaly in the law. As the Minister of State is aware, Ireland remains the last of the 27 EU nations without any legal provision to recognise transgender or intersex people, therefore, this Bill is welcome.

I am happy to discuss the rationale for my amendments. In a country where divorce was only made legal in 1996 it is ludicrous that it is about to be made compulsory for some. The single criteria which demands that applicants be single if they are to apply for recognition in their preferred gender, forces married transgender people to choose between their family and their identity. Imagine being told that the State will not legally recognise one's identity unless one first divorces one's husband or wife. The explanation given for this is that otherwise it would allow for the existence of same sex marriages which are currently not allowed by law in Ireland. This requirement fails to acknowledge that transgender families exist and fails to offer their marriage the constitutional protection offered to every other marriage in Ireland.

What is the position of the forced divorce requirement under the International Human Rights Convention? In its concluding comments last year on the Irish periodic report under the covenant on civil and political rights, the UN human rights committee said it was concerned that the new heads of a gender recognition Bill, approved by Cabinet in 2014, retains the requirement for married transgender persons to dissolve the existing marriage or civil partnership to have their preferred gender formally recognised. The UN human rights committee urges our Government to ensure the right to legal recognition of gender without the requirement of dissolution of marriage or civil partnership. Under the provisions of the Bill, in line with Irish divorce law, a transgender-----